The Coil

This year we are not only the visitor but we got involved with Malaysian group to perform dance and help a little bit on selling the food at Malaysia booth.
Well, I think I should explain what Ethnic Festival is.
Every year in Kansas City, the Ethnic and Culture committee which are consist of many world’s ethnic populations that living in Kansas City at the moment, held this event to introduce their heritage. Each committee will build a booth where they can sell foods, crafts or distribute some pamphlets about the country which they  represented.

This year is the first time for Malaysia committee to participate on this event. Indonesia already got involved in previous years, with Mbak Marti as the head of Indonesia committee. Malaysia and Indonesia shared the booth, where the Malaysian selling foods and Indonesian selling handcrafts.
Ghita King asked me to join them to perform Malaysian dance since she was too busy to be able to dance. I was nervous at the beginning because to dance in front of the crowd was made me really uncomfortable in the past. But, I know that this Malaysian dance is simple and fun, is not too complicated like Bali dance…AAAaaaa….!!

We had practice at Ghita’s and Zurin’s house about three times and of course there were more food to eat and more times had spent on chit chat rather that dance practice it self…hahahha! But that was the way to make it fun, we were enjoying every gathering followed with the dance practice, not on the way around.

The event went on for three days, and Phillip was there and helping the team everyday while I went there on Saturday to watch Indonesia dance performance and on Sunday when we went on stage.
It was so much fun!!! I had a chance to eat Chicken curry from India’s booth, Crepes with Maple syrup from France, Ice drink from Hawaii, Fried plantain from Philippine, while Phillip went to Greek, Turkey, and Brazil for their food. Yum..yum…..!!

The kids had a chance to meet each other ,played together and took care of each other, while all the adults were busy either to perform or working selling stuff. The Malaysian selling rendang, chicken sate and ayam persik with some traditional cakes, and also Milo and Es Bandung for drinks.
Kaela had a chance went on stage for a fashion show both for Indonesia and Malaysia costume, she was shy at first but then she even waived her hand at the crowd…..!!

I was sitting at Indonesia booth when Latino television crew  came and asked my opinion about the event.
I said to them that this event is wonderful just because it reminds us that there are many cultures and races that living together and to know each other cultures would give us sense of respect to each other.
I mean, with the cheap entrance fee ($3 for adult) and free for children under 12, this event is a great place to teach all of us especially the kids to know others way of living. There are free dance or music performance, and the neat thing is that every booth of every country has their own passport stamp. So, there were kids running around with their passport and tried to get stamped from each country. It was really neat!

Happy Birthday to my country: Indonesia!! On August 17th 2006.

I hope that you will keep on fighting through proverty, corruption, nature disaster, and millions of other problems.
I am proud to be Indonesian and I hope that one day, I could do something for you in return.

I love you Indonesia!

Oh…hari ini males sekali makan. Lihat kulkas…waduh kok nggak ada yang segar-segar bangsa rujak atau asinan gitu….Huahuaaaaaaa.
Maunya makan asinan Betawi yang pake kuah kacang, gula merah dan kerupuk kuning sama kacang goreng diatas sayur kol, mie kuning, sawi asem…..Duh menitik-nitik air liur gue!! Saking kangennya sama asinan, akhirnya gue beli Kim Chi …rasanya jauh sekali dari asinan..tapi lumayanlah ada rasa asem dan pedasnya.
Semalem, tiba-tiba pengen makan es krim…tumben soalnya biasanya tidak terlalu suka ice cream ala Amerika yang super manis dan terlalu creamy, saya sukanya es krim batangan yang dijual abang-abang lewat yang rasanya manis agak asin-asin…..Phillip lagi duduk disebelah, matanya membesar ketika tahu saya pengen ice cream, "Bener nih kamu mau ice cream? Tumben…ntar gue beli sekarang juga deh!"
Wah, pas lihat jam sudah hampir jam 10 malam kok rasanya nggak tega suruh dia keluar cuma buat beli ice cream……Kalau ada yang jual asinan sih boleh deh!!

Aduh merananya hidup jauh di rantau orang, kalau perut sudah nggak bisa kompromi…..rasanya pengen pulang aja bawaannya.

We are lucky because we have the recycle service in our area except they don’t take glass product.
I always try to manage and divide the house waste into those trash which is go to recycle bin or normal trash. I amazed how much plastic, paper and can trash that I collect by the end of every week. And I would sure feel guilty if I just throw those kind of trash without recycle it.
Today, I went to recycle place near by Metro North Mall to trash all kind of glass trashes that we have been store in garage for more than one year (beer bottles, candle jar, sauce jar, light bulb, etc). The place is kind of far away from home, but it’s located near by the mall so I planned to stop and walk over the mall to cool off after I dump all the trash. I just mix all the glasses waste in plastic bag and thinking, well…all I have to do is just take them out from the plastic bag and throw it one by one to the bin out there.
WRONG!!
Well, when I got there I saw many big dumpsters for every kind of trash. Metal, paper, can, plastic bottle, plastic bags, and glasses. But what was surprised me is that they have three kinds of dumpster for the glass product. Gee…..
1st. Clean brown glass.
2nd. Colorless glass
3rd. Green glass.

@?!*!!@#??…aaaaa……I want to scream because the weather was hot and humid and I had many plastic bags with mix color glass trash at the back of my car. Well, no choice, I had to divide those trash in three color categories then throw it into the dumpster. Just when  I finished to throw my last bottle, one lady came and looked inside the dumpster and started to took back the trash that I thrown.
She was quite upset and I could tell from her voice,
"O…you can’t do this. This is green glass, you got the wrong dumpster. And, you can’t throw the bottle that still has sauce in it…we don’t except dirty glass..bla..bla..blaa"
I felt like an idiot, of course I washed most of the jar contains paste sauce, peanut butter, etc for most of the time, but sometimes I forgot to wash it until it sparkling clean.
So, there I was collecting back what I’ve thrown from the dumpster and put it back into my smelly and sticky plastic bag……Yuck!!

But over all, I felt satisfied that at least I am doing sometime nice to our earth. Those trash will be reuse instead of poisoning the mother earth!
I can’t imagine how much trash that human produce everyday in every second….and if most of us doesn’t care to recycle it back, our planet will dying suffocate from cans, plastic stuff, and glasses.

Please recycle. We can help our planet to survive longer.